What hope is there for the truth when the press and the state are one and the same?
The only surprising thing about
Sarah Sanders joining FOX News was that it took this long. The former Trump press secretary is a perfect fit for the network, a faithful and shameless propagandist for the right. It would have been shocking if she’d ended up anywhere other than “Trump’s personal
YouTube channel.” It is, however, perhaps the most explicit confirmation we have that FOX now functions as the kind of “state television” apparatus that Americans think is is peculiar to countries like
Russia and Iran.
No network interested in airing journalism or reliable commentary would ever go near Sarah Huckabee Sanders. As
White House press secretary, she became infamous for the brazenness of her duplicity. Press secretaries are meant to be spin artists, and a good portion of the job consists of finding ways to excuse or downplay presidential misconduct, but Sanders took things to a new level. For example, here she is claiming Trump would never incite or condone violence: